Kogeto iCONIC 360-degree panoramic lens announced for the Galaxy Nexus

You know those little plastic lenses all your iPhone-slinging friends associates are using? Prepare for a few similar options on the android side of life. Kogeto, maker of the Kickstarter-turned-product line Dot lens, is expanding its entrepreneurial efforts to the Galaxy Nexus with a panoramic lens titled iCONIC. Like its current Dot for the iphon,e the iCONIC will capture 360 degrees if video, then stitch it back together with a custom app. The attachment will be available sometime in the first half of the year, with an MSRP of $79.

Don't have a Galaxy Nexus? Don't worry, Kogeto intends to expand its product line for more phones capable of 1080p video recording. While specific models weren't mentioned, and every 1080p phone won't be supported - the company hopes to offer its technology and expertise to other OEMs, who can customize and build new lenses for the Android superphone masses. As a business model goes, it's intriguing - there would need to be a lot of positive interest from both Android photo buffs and manufacturers.

The market for model-specific Android accessories (beyond the basic case/battery/screen protector area) is about to explode, as we've said before. In the years since the iPhone has become the single most popular phone model, Android has surpassed it in both technical capability and total sales. Now that Android phones are reaching the 50% market share point in dozens of markets, expect all the startups based an iPhone-exclusive idea to stand up and take notice.

Terminology correction. It doesn’t stitch anything back together as many still image panoramic applications do. It captures the entire 360 degrees in a single frame then their player app unwarps each frame and provides navigation controls to for you to select the direction you wish to look. This method allows for video capture and avoids the image quality issues common to stitching based applications along the seams where they stitched the multiple images together.